After branching out with a superhero comedy and an experimental urban drama, Michel Gondry is back to his usual whimsical tricks in Mood Indigo. And what great tricks they are.

A musical-olfactory pianocktail device, a kitchen assistant no bigger than a table spoon, a lung pierced with a water lily, and an underwater church wedding are just a few of the dreamlike images you’ll see in the new trailer. The story, based on the novel L’écume des jours by Boris Vian, centers on a newlywed couple (Romain Duris and Audrey Tautou) whose life together is threatened when the wife falls ill. Watch the video after the jump.

Michel Gondry‘s varied resume includes several documenatires, a superhero flick, and a scrappy urban drama, but he’s still best known for his most whimsical, even dreamlike creations. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is rightly hailed as a classic, and while Be Kind Rewind and The Science of Sleep aren’t at that level, they had a sweet, oddball charm that felt uniquely Gondrian.

His newest feature, Mood Indigo, puts him squarely back into that same quirky territory. The romance follows a blissed-out young couple (Romain Duris and Audrey Tautou) whose marriage becomes complicated by her illness. If that doesn’t sound so weird, wait til you hear the details: He’s the wealthy young inventor of an olfactory-musical device called the pianocktail, her sickness is caused by a water lily in her lung, and the only treatment is to surround her constantly with fresh flowers. Mood Indigo is actually an adaptation of Boris Vian‘s 1947 novel L’Écume des Jours, but Gondry could hardly have found a more suitable premise for his sensibility if he’d come up with it himself. Watch the first trailer after the jump.

In the past few years, Michel Gondry seems to have fallen away somewhat from the playful dreaminess that characterized his earlier work like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, and Be Kind Rewind. Last year’s The Green Hornet looked more or less like the studio superhero flick that it was, and his upcoming drama The We and the I seems to have an almost documentary-ish feel to it.

But for his next feature after that, the fantasy drama Mood Indigo, Gondry’s returning to his uniquely surreal aesthetic in full force. If you thought those bizarro cars were sight to behold, wait til you get a load of Audrey Tautou and Romain Duris‘ cloud-bubble ride, or Aïssa Maïga and Gad Elmaleh racing some kind of mini-Popemobile through what appears to be a hotel.